This isn't some sort of off the cuff plan; the MegaBot Mark I made its appearance at New York Comic Con 2014, though it wasn't completely finished. Mark II first showed up at Maker Faire last month. And from the very beginning of its development there have been plans to start a giant robot fighting league and televise the results.

These robots are manned, so obviously this won't be BattleBots-style carnage. Instead the robots will shoot paintballs, but seriously intense ones. The MegaBot Mark 2 fires 3-pound paint cannon balls at 100 miles per hour. Cages and other protective gear will keep that sort of stuff from hitting pilots directly, but you can bet that the paint splashing and the rattling of the robots will be plenty unpleasant and distracting for combatants.

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This first duel isn't due until sometime next year. In the meantime, MegaBot and Autodesk teamed up to solicit all kinds of other designs from engineers in hopes of padding out the roster a bit. There's no telling what kind of speed bumps these mech pilots could run into between now and the actual duel, and who knows whether giant robot paintball fighting—as nerdily awesome as it is—can catch on in a way that will make fights like this sustainable going forward. But here's to hoping, because even just watching this bot fire paintballs at a car is incredible.